


Dizzy on You

by cryogenia



Series: Tumblr Short-Shorts [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Sam Wilson is a badass, Sick Fic, Steve Rogers' sad matchbox stories, sometimes they're true, that is also true
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The headlights have hurt his eyes since mile marker sixty, and the insides of his throat seem to have been replaced by sandpaper. His head hasn't hurt this bad since he literally brought a helicarrier down on top of him, and in another two hours he's probably not going to be fit to sit up, let alone drive. </p><p>That's not the worst part.</p><p>The worst part is, Sam's figured it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dizzy on You

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little slice of Tumblr askbox sickfic for your Sunday! (Prompt at the bottom).

It’s not even dark when Sam pulls off into the first place that has a vacancy, and even then it’s almost too late. By the time he makes it up the second flight of stairs, Steve’s vision is swimming almost too hard to read the numbers on the doors. He guesses their room correctly anyway. The Perdido Motel is set up same as the Motel Six same as the Super 8: bare bones luxury compared to another night in the field. 

“201?” 

“Yeah,” Sam confirms, looking at the tag. He’s got an actual honest-to-goodness key. It might be charming, if Steve could look at it without the flashing hurting his eyes.

He presses his forehead against the marginally cooler doorframe, eyes closed, trying not to think. Sam disappears inside to get the A/C going, and Steve takes a few shallow, steadying breaths. His joints haven’t hurt like this since he was thirteen years old. If he’s getting rheumatic fever again, his mother might well come down from heaven and slap him.

“Clear!” Sam calls out.

“Coming.”

Steve drags his pack over the threshold into a modest but reasonably clean room. Two night stands, a lone table, one TV. One bed. 

“Looks like somebody was optimistic -” he begins. Dissolves into a hacking cough. Just great. Sam is at his elbow now, concerned instead of teasing him back, and he hates this so much. He hates it.

“You okay?”

Steve waves at him, irritated. 

“Gimme a second!”

He stumbles for the tiny bathroom, slaps on both faucets. Hangs his head over the basin as it runs. He knows academically it’s not going to fix it, but there’s something inexplicably comforting about hanging his head over a warm pot anyway.

Sam appears behind him in the mirror, leaning against the shower stall. Not judgmental, just...pointedly concerned. Steve hopes.

“Thought super soldiers didn’t get sick.”

“We do,” he admits. “Just not as long as everybody else. Give me a couple hours, I’ll be fine.”

“You want me to take a look?”

Steve swallows. It feels like sandpaper and glass in his throat.

“I don’t want to take advantage.”

“Sure,” Sam shakes his head. “You only ask me not to do my job.” 

He taps an invisible beret. “What do you think the flash is for? I got the training. Unless, you know, you only like me for my wingspan.”

Sam spreads his arms in a parody of his EXO unit. Flexes every muscle through his chest. On another day it would be enough to knock Steve loopy without the fever.

“Seriously, let me help. I want to.” 

And his face is so open, so beautiful. So sincere. Steve scrubs his hands over his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at his own reflection in the mirror right now. He never tanned much to begin - his mother’s Irish blood - but now with the serum he doesn’t even burn. Makes him stand out like a tourist in these southern climates.

Makes him look like a ghost.

“It isn’t that I don’t appreciate it,” he mumbles.

“What?”

“But I can’t do it again, Sam.” 

His eyes are burning now too, as hot as his chest. Everything throbs in time with his pulse; everything sways when he bobs his head.

“I used to be sick. All the time, I was sick. And Ma -”

“Steve.” Sam’s voice is louder, right next to his good ear. They’re both good ears now, he realizes, mildly hysterical. “You need to speak up, okay? I can’t hear you.”

Steve thrusts himself away from the sink. Turns toward Sam, but the room doesn’t stop when he’s finished. There’s a feeling like ice melting down to his feet and the whole world swoops just before it goes black.

“Oh,” he says briefly.

He remembers this, too.

\---

“Steve!”

Very warm arms are holding him. Catching him. Steve starts and scrambles because he is still falling. Sinking. He slides onto something hard and flat and slaps a hand against the ground.

“No - no, don’t stand up yet!” Sam is telling him. His voice is so deep. “It’s okay. I got you.”

Sam’s fingers press against his neck, tilting his head up. Tugging his collar open. 

“Sorry,” Steve says. His eyes are still a mess of grey spots.

“Nothing to be sorry about. Just take it easy, okay?”

Sam’s hands are everywhere, stretching his legs out, undoing buttons. So many hands, Steve can’t keep track of them all, so he doesn’t.

“Gonna lay here for a couple minutes, all right? You passed out,” Sam says. 

Steve licks his lips. His tongue feels like a slug in his mouth, but it’s serviceable.

“Not for very long.”

“No,” Sam confirms. “But you’re gonna stay here a couple minutes till you catch up with yourself, okay?”

“‘Kay.” 

Something soft and squishy inserts itself beneath his heels, lifting them up. A towel? He hears the brief patter of water bouncing against something hard, and then the tap switches off completely.

“When’s the last time you had something to eat?”

“I think...lunch. The sandwich?”

“Half my sandwich. You didn’t have your snack?”

Steve shakes his head. It sets off fireworks inside his skull.

“Ow. No. Didn’t feel like it.”

“Okay, well. In a minute we’re going to get you something to drink, and then I’m gonna dig out your PlumpyNut. Until then, we’re gonna hang out here in the bathroom.”

“Sorry.” 

“It’s okay. I’ve seen worse. Remind me to tell you about spring break ’99.”

Sam keeps asking him questions about where he hurts and since when and how badly. It’s easier to answer down here where it’s cool. By the time Sam goes to his pack to retrieve the infrared thermometer, he almost feels normal enough to stand up.

“Hey, take it slow!” Sam warns. He slides up beneath Steve’s right arm, shores him up. “No sense in getting up if you’re gonna go back down.”

Steve chuckles slightly, high and breathless. It turns into a cough, but not as painful as before.

“You remind me,” he says softly. 

“Of?”

Steve closes his eyes.

“Ma was a nurse. A good one. Maybe a doctor if she were born now.”

His butt presses into the edge of the sink and he leans against it. Sam’s weight is steady against him, helping him stay straight. He hears the click of the infrared gun, and then a beep.

“Me and Bucky, we used to talk about being doctors. He was gonna grow up and cure everything. When he wasn’t being a space explorer. You know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says. His voice has a smile in it. “My brother and I were gonna be dinosaur knights.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiles back. “Anyway, you reminded me.”

Something presses against his lips, hard and plastic instead of lips. Steve makes a disappointed hum and bites his teeth around it.

“Can you take some water for me? You’re pretty hot.”

“Your face is hot,” Steve mumbles childishly against the cup. 

This time there are lips, feather-light against his forehead. Steve shamelessly chases the kiss, rolling his head into it even as Sam pulls away.

“Now I can’t tell if you’re flirting or fucking with me,” Sam chuckles.

“Wanted it to be both,” Steve says. “Sorry.”

“Told you, there’s nothing to be sorry for. C’mon now, can you drink for me?”

His fingers are still shaky blocks of ice. Sam draws them up and molds them around a plastic cup, until he figure himself out enough to drink. He didn’t realize how thirsty he was until the water hit his lips; after that, he can’t stop sucking until he’s drained the cup dry.

“Good.” The cup vanishes somewhere behind him. “Think you can make it to bed?”

“Will you be in it?”

Sam laughs again, the slightest puff of air against Steve’s cheeks. That’s good, he likes making Sam laugh.

“Man, you got a one-track mind.”

“Fever makes me loopy,” Steve agrees. He’s dimly aware there is probably something wrong with him that it’s so very easy to talk to Sam. Maybe it’s just Sam. His emotions are always all over the place when he talks to him, up and down and frontways and back. He tells Sam as much. How he likes him, but he’s never exactly sure how to say it.

Sam slides one arm around his waist, encourages Steve to drape an arm over his shoulders again. 

“Well, you did faint straight into my arms,” Sam grins. “You know, there are easier ways.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I hate this.”

“Yeah, nobody likes having the flu,” Sam says. “Knowing you, some kind of goddamn super flu. If it gets any worse we’re heading in, all right? You got a doctor you can use?”

“Banner? He’s the only one with exposure to the serum.”

“Banner isn’t that kind of doctor. It gets worse, I’m calling Natasha. She knows who worked on Fury.”

“‘Kay.”

They shuffle out of the bathroom like a two headed creature, one badly orchestrated step at a time. When Sam finally, carefully, helps him down onto the lumpy mattress, it’s still so heavenly he could cry.

Sam rustles around in Steve’s pack for something, then his own.

“Here,” he says. “I know you metabolize most stuff too fast, but it can’t hurt to try.”

Steve looks down at Sam’s offering, an open meal replacement bar and a handful of brightly colored pills. This is how he knows his emotions are shot: he has the alarming urge to cry.

“Would have been marrow soup,” he says. “And tablets. She always had some kinda new tablets.”

Sam must see it in his face because he’s up on the bed beside him in a flash, and he’s on the right side and that was Bucky’s place and that’s it, he probably is going to cry and that’s as awful as everything else.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Hey hey hey.”

“I can’t do it again,” Steve tells him. “We -- there was one bed in the entire place, me and Ma took turns with it. Shared it. When I got sick, she slept on the couch so I could breathe better. She was on that couch a lot.”

Sam’s hands are cool and soft on his cheek. A nice contrast to the burning in his face. They keep petting down his neck, to his sides, slow and soothing. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Sam says. “You’re stewing in your own juices, man. Might regret it tomorrow.”

Steve bites down on his lip. “It’s okay. I mean. Someone should know. How good she was to me. People blame the mother, you know? When your kid has asthma.”

Sam’s hands falter only briefly.

“No,” he says firmly. “No, they don’t, anymore. It’s a disease, and there’s a lot of factors -”

“But I was born too little!” Steve swallows hard. “They didn’t think I was gonna live. I came too early. Talked about putting me at Coney Island but I wasn’t that little I guess, and Ma worked up the hospital then and I don’t know, I survived.” 

He grimaces.

“Sometimes I think that’s all I’m good at.”

“Surviving?” Sam sounds incredulous. “Hey. Okay you lost me somewhere around Coney Island, but in general I get it.”

“Baby hatchery,” Steve tries to explain. “Had ‘em on display. They put them in these little incubators and they had people come and feed them till they got big enough. Bucky thought it was aces, he was gonna hatch them all someday.”

“O...kay,” Sam says. “Gonna come back to that when maybe we’re not hallucinating but what I’m hearing is, you were a premie. That’s not your mom’s fault either, okay? Or yours. It happens sometimes, for a lot of reasons.” 

His voice softens. ”Sounds like you were really, really lucky.”

Steve grinds his knuckles against his aching temples. “Didn’t feel lucky. My lungs didn’t work. And maybe it’s different now but - back then, only thing you did was lie in bed when you were sick. Get camphor if you were lucky. Ma would make me these awful teas and they never worked, and then I couldn’t see anybody either. Bucky could only visit if she was on shift.”

He smiles a little, pats Sam’s side of the bed. “He used to sit there and read me all his detective books. He’d do all the voices just like a radio show.”

Sam pulls one of his limp hands up and kisses the knuckles. “Sounds like you really miss them.”

“I -” His voice clots again. “I do and I don’t?”

Even saying it hurts. He physically winces, too embarrassed to watch Sam’s reaction. 

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Ma, she did so much for me. And Bucky. But I just - every time I got in that bed, for all we knew, I was going to die. And they could still walk around, and go to work, and go to school. They didn’t even let me try. So I loved them...but I also hated them. You know?”

He flops an arm across his face, blocking out the remains of the light. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I don’t think I’m making any sense.”

“Flu does that,” Sam says softly. “But for what it’s worth? I get it.”

Long fingers comb through his sweaty hair, peeling it back away from his forehead. 

“And if this is about me pushing to treat you, I’m sorry. It’s my nature, I jump in. PJs, we act fast, you know? Didn’t mean to upset you.”

The chuckle sticks somewhere in his lungs, comes out half a cough. “‘Jump in’.”

He never thought it was physically possible to hear someone rolling their eyes, but somehow Sam manages it.

“Yeah, glad that’s what you got out of that. Anyway. I didn’t mean to make you feel trapped. I just wanted to help.”

Steve grinds his face into the crook of his arm. He can’t look at Sam right now, he can’t even look at himself. He’s the worst kind of ingrate, and what’s worst of all is he can’t seem to stop admitting it.

“You do help. All the time. You do so much for me.” Spots explode behind his eyes and wheel like miniature suns. “I don’t want to hate you, too.”

“I don’t want you to hate me either,” Sam says finally. His voice sounds deceptively steady. “Gonna go out on a limb and guess that’s kinda hyperbole, though. Cause if you really resented Barnes for taking care of you so much, we would not be out here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere chasing after his ass. How ‘bout this: if it’ll make you feel better, you can take care of me when I inevitably catch whatever SARS-Ebola nonsense you got cooking. Deal?”

Steve peeks out from beneath his elbow. His vision is still swimming, but Sam’s face - blurry as it is - remains constant amidst the sea. 

“Deal,” he croaks.

Sam pats his hip. “Good. Now eat your incredibly appetizing chunk of peanut slop, see if that helps. I’m gonna text Natasha if that’s okay. Ask if there’s somebody you can call. Your choice, okay? Unless there’s an emergency. I do reserve the right to jump in if someone’s actively dying.”

“That’s fair,” Steve nods and reaches for the packet. Truthfully, his energy is waning too much for him to get through it, but he wants to try. He will. 

“Sam?” he says through a mouthful of peanut paste.

“Mm?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” Sam smiles. “I want you to be comfortable. And if that means me butting out sometimes? No problem with that either.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Steve says.

“Probably not,” Sam grins. “But you got me anyway. I am kind of attached to you, in case you haven’t noticed.” 

“Yeah,” Steve whispers. He threads his fingers with Sam’s. Pulls their clasped hands up to rest over his heart. “I noticed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: "Sam/Steve: you fainted into my arms - you know, if you wanted to get my attention, you could have just asked." Because Sam Wilson is a badass pararescue professional who flies to save lives. 
> 
> Also, the [Coney Island premature baby sideshow](http://www.coneyislandhistory.org/index.php?g=hall_of_fame&s=couney) was a real thing - before hospitals invested in incubator technology, Dr. Couney funded premie care by setting them up as an amusement park attraction. Check it out!


End file.
